Stephen Yusko's Blog

 Feast of St. Phoebe, Deacon  Thursday, September 3rd  I decided to revisit an article I had written for my parish's bulletin, the "Deacon's Corner" in 2018.  I stand by what I have written and have decided to republish this on St. Phoebe's day. Needless to say, this was never published in the church bulletin, but  I choose again to blog it here.   I'm a Wondering   If, as a Deacon, I am called to wonder; would it really be a source of scandal and confusion for me to express this wonder? I hope not. I believe if we are to deepen our faith, we must continue to wonder and ask questions, even if the pope or a bishop has not “asked for discussion on the matter”. I recently wrote a blog about the question of woman deacons, which I also submitted for the weekly church bulletin. Within a day, my article was rejected from the bulletin’s “Deacon’s Corner” and I was sent an email stating that the article would be potentially scandalous and could sow seeds of confusion a

Quit Trying to "sell" me Something Looking back I realized how long I've been in the "Selling Game". As my years begin to sneak up on the milestone of sixty, I feel qualified to spot a pitch artist at work.  Pitch Artist The seeds of sales development goes back to seventh grade at St. Martin of Tours Catholic grammar school and Sister Xavier's class. The venerable Sister stood at about five foot two, and no one dared to see if she had eyes of blue, but for sure she ruled her classroom with an iron fist, and what seemed to be an iron ruler.  As a youngster trained to respect authority, with a deep fear of the religious habited nuns who, in the case of Sr. Xavier seemed to be beyond my ability to calculate age, I endeavored to win her over. Most everyone in the class was well behaved or worked hard not to get caught by "Xaiver" for even the slightest infraction.   I remember the specific cadence of her walk down each row of desks, h